Denis Boytsov vs. Fernely Feliz on Saturday

By Boxing News - 07/04/2008 - Comments

By Erik Schmidt: Undefeated heavyweight prospect Denis Boytsov (21-0, 18 KOs) will be facing Fernely Feliz (23-8, 16 KOs) in a scheduled eight-round bout at the Gerry Weber Stadium, Halle, in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Boytsov, 22, is a former Russian standout with over 100 amateur wins, including a victory at the 2004 Junior World championships.

After ending his amateur boxing career and turning professional, Boytsov moved to Germany and is now living and fighting out of Hamburg, where he is trained by the legendary trainer Fritz Sdunek, known mostly as the original professional trainer for Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko. Up until Boytsov’s last fight, an 8th round unanimous decision over veteran Robert Hawkins in April, he’d been matched very soft by his German management. In fact, of his 18 knockouts, 13 had taken place in the 1st round. Some of that, of course, is due to Boytsov’s good power, but a good deal of it has been due to the careful matchmaking of his German management, who have brought him along slowly, avoiding tough opponents and especially ones with any kind of power.

The lack of quality opponents has been good in some respects, allowing Boytsov to learn some things, expand his stamina slowly, but it seems to have retarded his growth as a fighter. After all, how much can you learn by knocking out a D-level fighter in one round? He hasn’t been matched with just the usual C-class fodder; No, they’ve put him in with some truly awful fighters, the type that go down after the first punch is landed.

At the same time, they appear to have neglected teaching him any kind of head or upper body movement, as Boytsov goes after his opponents like a stiff robot, veering one way, then the other as he stalks his opponents around the ring. His hand speed is quite good, perhaps a shade slower than Mike Tyson, whom he’s often compared to due to his speed and similar physique. However, his power is a couple levels below Tyson, though he does hit hard.

It’s Boytsov’s incredible hand speed that is the reason for most of his knockouts, because he catches his opponents with shots that they don’t see coming. However, he hasn’t been tough to throw flurries as of yet, as far as I can tell. He rarely throws more than one to two punches at a time, making him quite predictable. With his kind of speed, he’s capable of landing quick flurries of six to eight punches in a matter of seconds, something which would allow him to take out virtually all of his opponents, even his non-handpicked future opponents I would venture to guess.

He clearly needs to start learning how to put his punches together because he doesn’t have the size, reach or massive power to defeat the larger heavyweights with his current plodding style of fighting and his old 1-2 combinations he’s been limited to. In his fight with Hawkins, Boytsov’s punch output was very low in each round, averaging 20-30 punches per round. Frankly, that’s terrible for a heavyweight, especially a heavyweight as young and as fast as Boytsov.

That suggests there’s a big problem in his training, and it needs to be fixed before he’s moved against better fighters than Hawkins. There won’t be a problem beating the likes of Feliz on Saturday, for he’s nothing but an average journeyman fighter brought in to make Boytsov look good against, but against better opponents, Boytsov is going to need to turn up the volume considerably in his punch output. A good role model to follow, at least in terms of punch output, is unbeaten Russian Alexander Povetkin, who punches nonstop in his fights and wears out his opponents.

Povetkin doesn’t have nearly the same skills as Boytsov does, yet he makes the most of what he has by outworking his opponents. This is what Boytsov is going to need to start doing, because he’s going to be coming up short, getting outworked, by the better heavyweights once he starts moving up.